Once-respected belts that died off?

One of the most fascinating thread ideas I've ever heard of @cross_trainer. Unfortunately I don't have a clue! This is definitely worth researching though.

 

The New York (NYSAC) title was taken seriously enough that Joe Frazier was recognized as a world champion after beating Buster Mathis.

Although it was a sham, I recall Sean O’Grady being referred to as champion while holding the WAA title after he was stripped by the WBA. Naming Monte Masters as their heavyweight champion didn’t help their cause one bit, though.

The respected NBA devolved into the WBA.

 

The Huitzilopotchli Jade Azteca Belt that the WBC issued last Thursday seems to be terribly underrated now. Nobody seems to know about it.

 

This might be a good resource to build out from:
https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...era-boxings-sanctioning-organizations.602683/

 

Didn't the Canadian Heavyweight title mean something at one point?

 

Yes, for quite a large swath of time actually - from 1958 until 2001, over which period the majority of reigns and defenses belonged to a highly respectable triad of George Chuvalo, Trevor Berbick and Razor Ruddock. For the last two decades it has fallen down the crapper, eh?

Also impressive was how far apart each member of that Canadian heavyweight champ trio stretched their championship days. Chuvalo won it first in 1958 and his last defense in his last reign was 1978. Berbick got it the next year, 1979, and made his own last defense in 2000. Ruddock? '88-2001.

 

NABF had significant cachet as a regional belt for a while. It almost always ensured a rating in Ring ratings.

Same with the Commonwealth title.

 

Canadian titles in general were pretty well regarded up to and throughout the 70's and 80's. Donato Paduano, Clyde Gray and Davey Hilton all first broke into world rankings as a result of winning the Canadian championship at welterweight.

 

Best guess...I think the advent of sanctioning body trinkets (e.g Continental titles) kind of diluted the title picture. Moreover, the NABF became tied specifically to the WBC, as tended to serve as a means of advancement in that particular organization.

 

In addition to his 5 NBA/World middleweight championships, Sugar Ray Robinson won the Pennsylvania word title in 1950 against Robert Villemaine and defended it against Jose Basora. He then won full recognition as world champ by beating Jake LaMotta in 1951. After the NBA stripped him of his championship status in 1958/59, he still held world title status in New York and Massachusetts.

 

Sort of...

It didn't "become tied specifically" to it but was rather created by the WBC (formed six years earlier) as its subsidiary for ranking North American fighters, the first such body (later joined by first the USBA, then NABA under the auspices of the WBC's main rival, the WBA...then later still the NABO in the shade of the WBO).

And nothing killed it, per se; it just became a weaker currency as natural consequence of its diminishing exclusivity in the market. When you look at the history of the organizations it only follows logically that what had been a springboard title for the perhaps more prestigious of a then "Big Two" would see its value diluted by the proliferation of different bodies at the "world" level. So, if the NABF title in a division was, in the decade or two after its birth (in '69), worth about, let's just arbitrarily say one-quarter the WBC's version of the world title (with there being, in this day, only the WBA and WBA staking any legitimate claim to sanctioning world champs) - then by giving the WBA their own springboard trinket (USBA, later swapped for NABA) with the addition of alternate world titles in our modern, splintered era (with the WBO having NABO and the IBF scooping up the WBA's castoffs to make the USBA its own lesser-plateau springboard) you're cutting it to an eighth, and then ultimately roughly a sixteenth. Granted that assumes dividing their worth evenly, which you oughtn't (as the NABF and NABA both obviously carry more weight than either of their younger cousins, just as the WBC and WBA remain more prestigious world championships than either the IBF or especially WBO), but still. The more the not so merrier. Inflation, basically.